This incisive and luminescent story, scrupulously grounded in sixteenth-century sources, illuminates the power that "naming" has to create a world - in this case a world still haunted by being the accidental Indies. It is a book about how we perceive and represent the world around us, about the creative and destructive power of language. Through its elaboration of the rich and lively ironies of the Columbus story, The Accidental Indies looks at the nature of storytelling itself.

Do you want to succeed in your academics? Do you want to improve your academic results? Then this book is for you. This book provides three simple steps that will change your academic life if applied correctly. The concept of goal setting is customised and presented in a manner that is easy to understand and implement. Further, valuable tools and resources are discussed that will help you to track your performance and make the required adjustment so as to ensure that you achieve the desired success. The private and public sectors are always on the lookout for academically deserving students (to offer funds via scholarships and bursaries) and best performing students to employ; So imagine the magnitude of opportunities that good results would open for you. Get ready to reach your true potential by applying the 3 steps to achieving academic success!

This book brings together both leading-edge research and practical insights on the first-year experience in higher education. Written by a large team of experts, the text integrates a variety of multidisciplinary approaches and real-life case studies into an effective pedagogical resource for the higher education scholarly audience of both professors and administrators to address the needs of first-year students in higher education. The book includes material authored by 39 professors and professionals from more than 20 universities and higher education organizations from across the USA, Canada, the Philippines, and Germany. This book offers insights for disciplines including business administration and management, communications, counseling, education, law and governance, mental health and psychology, sociology, and others. Scholars and practitioners in a variety of higher education areas can benefit from it in terms of their work in academic success, advising, campus safety, career services, dual enrollment programs, emergency management, mathematics education, service learning, student well-being, technology management, and other areas.

This book presents and examines key issues not only on addressing changing student demographics and needs but also on aligning institutional and student expectations, connecting student-oriented services systemically, organizing and fostering student services for learning, and creating and delivering services for students to achieve success on campus. While the essential supportive role student services plays in student retention and success is generally understood, this book provides several constructive approaches and key indicators that service providers can use to challenge their campuses for better results in achieving student success. While this book does not define what student success is for all institutions or suggest that one size fits all institutions, it does emphasize that student learning and achieving student success on campus is everyone’s business. The chapter contributors share their wisdom on and experience in creating a student-centered culture and emphasize student services as the primary approach for putting students first in the campus community. Written for student service providers, academic departments, and others responsible for the support, direction, and coordination of services to students—vice presidents, deans, directors, and department chairs—readers will learn how to encourage a variety of desired outcomes, including student persistence, satisfaction, learning, and personal development. Also included is a systems perspective that will help readers evaluate and align services for students with the goals of both the students and the institution.

This book demonstrates the efficacy of attendance-based early alerts for building data-informed cultures of student success. For educational leaders who want to deliver highly personalized student experiences to enable engagement, increase retention, and bolster graduation rates, the author provides a comprehensive strategy to facilitate change.

This practical guide to outcomes-based assessment in student affairs is designed to help readers meet the growing demand for accountability and for demonstrating student learning. The authors offer a framework for implementing the assessment of student learning and development and pragmatic advice on the strategies most appropriate for the readers’ particular circumstances. Beginning with a brief history of assessment, the book explains how to effectively engage in outcomes-based assessment, presents strategies for addressing the range of challenges and barriers student affairs practitioners are likely to face, addresses institutional, divisional, and departmental collaboration, and considers future developments in the assessment of student success. One feature of the book is its use of real case studies that both illustrate current best practices in student affairs assessment that illuminate theory and provide examples of application. The cases allow the authors to demonstrate that there are several approaches to evaluating student learning and development within student affairs; illustrating how practice may vary according to institutional type, institutional culture, and available resources. The authors explain how to set goals, write outcomes, describe the range of assessment methods available, discuss criteria for evaluating outcomes-based assessment, and provide steps and questions to consider in designing the reflection and institutional assessment processes, as well as how to effectively utilize and disseminate results. Their expert knowledge, tips, and insights will enable readers to implement outcomes-based assessment in ways that best meet the needs of their own unique campus environments.

An indispensable resource for teachers, administrators, and researchers involved with STEM education This book distills the findings of more than three-hundred published works concerned with minority students in STEM education. It gives the most complete picture possible of what is known about ethnic and racial minorities in STEM education and provides valuable guidance on how readers can apply those insights to enhance their efforts to facilitate student success in STEM learning. In addition, the authors develop a rigorous model to help facilitate and direct research, policy, and practices in minority STEM education.

This book is essential for academics that enter the field of higher education and training, as it focuses on preparing teachers and trainers to respond appropriately to student success challenges. Student success is a burning issue,both globally and locally. While student achievement is determined by a combination of factors, teachers and their teaching practices do matter. Higher education teachers are expected to fulfil different roles at different times, such as planning for curriculum implementation, mentorship and coaching, facilitating learning, resource development, and student assessment. Against this background the primary purpose of Empowering novice academics for student success: Wearing different hats is building the capacity of novice teachers and trainers to play an influential role in increasing student success throughput.

Student success comprises a complex system of expectations and measurements. Designed for school library media specialists, this book focuses on library media programs and examines the factors that influence student achievement. Through a presentation of research trends and actual practice, award-winning author Lesley Farmer demonstrates how media specialists can encourage student achievement by creating an environment conducive to learning. Farmer takes a systems approach, illuminating how each stakeholder in a student's education contributes to and impacts student achievement. Chapters include: What Defines Student Achievement? Research in the School Library World Internal Factors: The School Library Media Program School Factors Towards Student Achievement Student Factors Towards Student Achievement Societal Factors Towards Student Achievement Focus on Reading: Who's a Good Reader? Next Steps In addition to research findings about library programming, Farmer examines collection resources, facilities, staffing, curricula, instruction, reading issues, services, products, and administration. Key research studies are cited throughout the work to optimize referral to relevant information. This is an invaluable guide for school library media specialists, as well as for faculty and students in LIS and education programs.

This book focuses on one of the key questions in education: What determines a student’s success?Based on twenty years of work on student success, Ray Padilla here presents two related models he has developed that both provide a framework for understanding success and indicate how it can be enhanced and replicated. The research and theory that inform his models are covered in detail.He defines student success simply as progress through a program of study, such that the student and others expect him or her to complete it and be promoted to the next level or graduate. Rather than focusing on the reasons for failure or drop out, his approach focuses on understanding the factors that account for student success and that enable many students, some of them under the most challenging circumstances, to complete all program requirements and graduate. The models provide schools and colleges with an analytical tool to uncover the reasons for student success so that they can develop strategies and practices that will enable more students to emulate their successful peers. They address the characteristics of the students—such as motivation and engagement, the ability to surmount barriers, and persistence—and similarly surface the characteristics of teachers, the educational institution, its resources, and the contexts in which they interact. The process provides administrators with a clear and appropriate strategy for action at the level of each individual unit or subpopulation. Recognizing the need to develop general models of student success that also can be applied locally to specific situations and contexts, the book presents Padilla’s Expertise Model of Student Success (EMSS) that can be applied to general populations, as well as the Local Student Success Model (LSSM) that can be used to drive local institutional strategies to improve student success.The book demonstrates how the models have been applied in settings as diverse as a minority high school, a community college, and an Hispanic Serving Institution, and for such purposes as comparing a high-performing and a non high-performing elementary school. Contributors:* Kimberly S. Barker is an assistant professor at Texas A&M University-Kingsville, System Center San Antonio. She is currently working in the College of Education, Department of Curriculum and Instruction.* Mary J. Miller is the Instructional Compliance Director for the Edgewood Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas. Prior to this appointment, she served as an elementary school principal for ten years.* George E. Norton is the Assistant Vice President of Student Affairs for Admissions, Orientation & Transition Services at The University of Texas at San Antonio.* Ralph Mario Wirth is an administrator and director of educational planning at The San Antonio School for Inquiry and Creativity, as well as lead researcher for the Democratic Schools Research Institute, Inc.